Martha Kruzewski > Martha's Quotes

“She’d worn anxiety like a thick robe for so long that it was hard for her to take it off.”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“Hollywood is bigger down right now by sequels, by the uninspired. Well, my M.O. is a two-hour feast for your senses. That means starting the concept of filmmaking from scratch, making it your own.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Slow Down

“Everybody loves to hear a heartfelt thank you. There’s impressive power in saying thank you, as gratitude begets sincerity. When you acknowledge somebody, you disarm them. Positivity flows from thankfulness.”
― Art Rios, Let's Talk: ...About Making Your Life Exciting, Easier, And Exceptional

“உங்கள் நம்பிக்கைகளை நீங்கள் மாற்றும்போது, உங்கள் நடவடிக்கைகள் மாறும் என்பதை அவன் அறிந்தான்.”
― Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? (Tamil)

“Das heiße Wetter lockt Schlangen und Sklavenhalter gleichermaßen hervor und ich kann die eine Gattung von giftigen Kreaturen so wenig leiden wie die andere.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, Erlebnisse aus dem Leben eines Sklavenmädchens (Ungekürzte Gesamtausgabe)

“Allora per la prima volta ci siamo accorti che la nostra lingua manca di parole per esprimere questa offesa, la demolizione di un uomo. In un attimo, con intuizione quasi profetica, la realtà ci si è rivelata: siamo arrivati al fondo. Più giù di così non si può andare: condizione umana più misera non c'è, e non è pensabile. Nulla più è nostro: ci hanno tolto gli abiti, le scarpe, anche i capelli; se parleremo, non ci ascolteranno, e se ci ascoltassero, non ci capirebbero. Ci toglieranno anche il nome: e se vorremo conservarlo, dovremo trovare in noi la forza di farlo, di fare sì che dietro al nome, qualcosa ancora di noi, di noi quali eravamo, rimanga.”
― Primo Levi, If This Is A Man/The Truce: 'Miraculous' Philippe Sands

“I must say this now about that first fire. It was magic. Out of dead tinder and grass and sticks came a live warm light. It cracked and snapped and smoked and filled the woods with brightness. It lighted the trees and made them warm and friendly. It stood tall and bright and held back the night.”
― Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”
― leo tolstoy

“If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Case shuffled into the nearest door and watched the other passengers as he rode. A pair of predatory-looking Christian Scientists were edging toward a trio of young office techs who wore idealized holographic vaginas on their wrists, wet pink glittering under the harsh lighting. The techs licked their perfect lips nervously and eyed the Christian Scientists from beneath lowered metallic lids. The girls looked like tall, exotic grazing animals, swaying gracefully and unconsciously with the movement of the train, their high heels like polished hooves against the gray metal of the car’s floor. Before they could stampede, take flight from the missionaries, the train reached Case’s station.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.”
― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

“What kind of a place is Expectations?" inquired Milo, unable to see the humor and feeling very doubtful of the little man's sanity.
"Good question, good question," he exclaimed. "Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going. Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations, but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“I spent hours putting that cassette together. To me, making a tape is like writing a letter - there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one. . . A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention, and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch. . . oh, there are loads of rules. (pg. 88-9)”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Though surrounded by sinfulness and terror, we must not become so embittered that we take Satan's methods as our own.”
― Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

“There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Go on caring for me.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. 'The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.' ”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.”
― James Herriot, James Herriot's Cat Stories

“Sun, don't rise!”
― Gail Carson Levine, The Two Princesses of Bamarre

“A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!”
― Mary Ann Shaffer

“She look like she ain't long for this world but dressed well for the next.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I felt a great emptiness inside, as if I had been searching for some glimpse, not outside but within myself, and had discovered that there was nothing to be found.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“As if, with beasts' eyes, angels led
The way, I slip back to your bed,
Quiet as a hooded light,
Hushed by the shadows of the night.

And then, my dark one, you shall soon
Embrace the cold beams of the moon,
Around a fresh grave, the chilling hiss
Of serpent coiled shall be my kiss.

When morning shows his livid face
Your bed shall feel my empty place,
As cold as death, till fall of night.

Others take tenderness to wife:
Dread gives away your youth and life
To me, to be the bride of fright.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“These critters ain't like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

“One of the reasons I grew my hair long last year was that I like how my bangs cover my eyes: it helps me block out the things I don't want to see."
-August thinking”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“At every new torment which is too hard to bear we feel yet another vein protrude, to unroll its sinuous and deadly length along our temples or beneath our eyes. And thus gradually are formed those terrible ravaged faces, of the old Rembrandt, the old Beethoven, at whom the whole world mocked. And the pockets under the eyes and the wrinkled forehead would not matter much were there not also the suffering of the heart. But since strength of one kind can change into a strength of another kind, since heat which is stored up can become light and the electricity in a flash of lightning can cause a photograph to be taken, since the dull pain in our heart can hoist above itself like a banner the visible permanence of an image for every new grief, let us accept the physical injury which is done to us for the sake of the spiritual knowledge which grief brings; let us submit to the disintegration of our body, since each new fragment which breaks away from it returns in a luminous and significant form to add itself to our work, to complete it at the price of sufferings of which others more richly endowed have no need, to make our work at least more solid as our life crumbles away beneath the corrosive action of our emotions.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Distinguée? In what sense might a maid be distinguée?”
― Louis de Bernières, The Dust that Falls from Dreams